I have an issue that I need some advice on. Our oldest foster child, Little Man, should be legally free very soon, and we will be starting the adoption process with him. We have been calling him is birth name since he came to us, mostly because his visits with birth mom have continued twice a week. He will be three in March, and has been a foster child since 9 days of age, and has been in our home since he was 14 months old.
We had always talked about changing his name, and even have one picked out. I'm still pretty sure we will be doing this. However, my dilemma comes to the scrapbooking part. Of course, I am very behind in scrapbooking, so there are hardly any pages done of any of my kiddos. But when it comes to scrapbooking him, do I use his birth name on the pages up until we get to adopt him, or do we use his permanent name on anything pre-adoption? I don't know why I struggle with this, but I do.
Our other two kiddos - full siblings - have not seen their birth parents in almost a year, and so we have been calling them their permanent names since April '07. We will be faced with the same kind of dilemma with some of their pictures as well.
Does anyone have any experience or wisdom in this for me???? Please????
8 comments:
Use his birth name until he is adopted. I am adopted and would have wanted that:)
We kept Ella's birth name as her middle name so her early pages say "Boo" and her later pages (still pre-adoption) say Ella Boo and her more recent pages say Ella. We also started calling her Ella Boo when we knew that we would be changing her name, we slowly dropped the Boo over about six months, although we still occasionally call her Ella Boo since it is her middle name.
Hi.
My husband and I are foster-adopting two brothers, now age 1 and 2, who have been with us for 14 months. (Termination trial next month, should go well, but it's been a bumpy ride!)
A while back I was trying to google something about foster-adopt and permanency and I came across your blog in the process.
Congrats on the upcoming permanent adoptions! I've enjoyed your posts.
Although your question is about the scrap-booking part, I think the scrapbook question really highlights the whole basic name-change question. And I'm a horrible scrapbooker so I can't answer that question anyway! : )
This is just how we ended up making the "name decision" about our 2 foster-adopt boys.
1. At first, we both had a strong feeling that we should get to name our own children.
2. After a lot of thought and getting used to the idea, we decided we did NOT want to change the first name. We decided we would just change the middle name. We felt strongly that kids who have already been through this much trauma at such a young age should just not have to deal with being called a new first name. We could not imagine that this would feel positive for them. It felt like we'd be changing the name for our sake, not their sake. (Of course, with very young babies who don't know their names yet, this isn't as much of an issue.)
3. As we've been working through this process, we decided we were EXCITED to keep their names. We want them to still have a sense of pride about the biological family. We felt like it was permission for them to feel good about their biological heritage, vs. something to hide or be ashamed of. We know some people who adopted 3 children, and kept their birth name as part of their legal name. 2 of the 3 chose to go by their birth names for awhile in high school. I think this is an important part of working out identity while growing up. I really like this idea.
Okay, I know that's a long comment from someone you don't even know. Hope you find it useful as you make your decision. You've already made the really important decision, of course, to make these kids part of your family. The name thing is minor compared to that. : )
We adopted our girl from Foster care and we kept her first name and renamed her middle name (which happened to be the birth moms last name).
I guess it is different strokes, but I just couldnt imagine changing her first name - she is Jamie!
As a adoptive foster parent myself I feel that the Bio parents already give the children all there genes, and features....We as adoptive parents have the chance to give them the gift of a name.
Since Cookie's mom came to the hospital in an ambulance and couldn't even give her name b/c she was so high on cocaine, we decided whatever name she came up with at the hospital was not one given out of love. Her forever name is named after her dad - Michael Irvin A. - so her name is Mia. :) For our second daughter (Mia's sister), her birth name is Carol Jean, so that's definitely being changed - LOL! Her forever name will be Rebekah Ileana. We have not used their birth names in their lifebooks, but instead used the nicknames we gave them and little "pet names", and then their forever names later in the books. We haven't used Rebekah yet in her book, b/c we are still awaiting TPR and it feels a bit early to do that (although we do have lots of things with "Rebekah" on them).
Since your son has been called by his birth name, I'd do what the first several commenters mentioned - gradually moving it to the name you give him. In situations like ours, the name also represents the fresh start, and the becoming a NEW family. For some, honoring the birth family seems more appropriate than in other cases where abuse and violence give the birth parents little place in a life book (IMHO).
our two sons both had names that are uncommon and a little odd. We chose to change them upon placement. That said, we've had each of them from infancy (one at birth, the second at almost 2weeks).
My husband (adopted) found out his birthname during a search and decided to name his first son his birthname (this was his first marriage). For our second son, his middle name is my husband's birth last name.
I know there are a lot of heated debates over this issue, so go with your gut. I also believe that naming a child is a part of claiming that child as "your own", but don't be surprised years down the road that this issue may come up again in either naming their own child a birthname, or even going by a birthname by choice.
At that point, if they choose to do that, I would simply offer support and go with it.
Very interesting questions! Our daughter's adoption was finalized in Jan. 08. We changed her name as well but I hadn't even thought of what I am going to do as far as scrapbooking is concerned. (LOL I haven't touched my scrapbook stuff since the day she arrived!)
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